Many companies have difficulty in processing the large number of outstanding issues they have to deal with. This is a problem because failure to properly respond to an issue (both in terms of substance and time) often upsets a customer or user, especially if that user has identified the issue to the company.
Not all issues are equally important, so any attempt to deal with a large number of issues with limited resources requires efficient ways of prioritizing issues. To that end, there are ways of evaluating a user's interest in a given issue, and these metrics may be used to more accurately prioritize the issue.
The current art makes attempts to prioritize a task according to object factors (such as the cost of money or time that completing a task will require, or the loss of money or time from leaving the task uncompleted), but ignores that there are subjective factors which may be used to prioritize a task, particularly subjective factors which are inadvertently conveyed. These subjective factors are a valuable tool in prioritizing tasks. Where a user subjectively believes a task to be very important, even if it is objectively unimportant, failure to appropriately complete the task may anger the user. Where that user is the customer and the entity charged with the task is a business, an angered customer may end his business relations with that business.
For example, take the case of a customer of an internet service provider (ISP) company who obtains from the ISP interne service at his residence. If the service is interrupted because of an equipment failure, the task of restoring service may objectively appear to have a priority equal to that of any other customer in the same situation. However, if the customer has limited mobility, and the internet is his primary means of communicating with the outside world, the interrupted service may be of subjectively significant importance to him. This subjective importance may manifest itself by the customer repeatedly checking with the company for updates to the status of the task of restoring service, and by the customer's inquiries being particularly detailed. If the company is unable to accurately quantify this subjective importance, and respond to the task accordingly, the customer may become upset and terminate his service with the company in favor of a rival ISP, and the company will lose business.
A benefit of subjective prioritization is that one may address tasks before the user or customer becomes overly disappointed or angry. Thus, subjective prioritization can result in an unexpectedly large improvement in customer satisfaction.